Merrion Square Park, surrounded by beautiful Georgian houses, is one of my favourite of Dublin’s city centre parks. Known until recently as Archbishop Ryan Park, the heavy criticism of that Archbishop in a recent report on the abuse of children by the Catholic Church led to the renaming of the park.
This park was historically open only on a private basis to residents of the square, much like St. Stephen’s Green was prior to its opening to the public in 1880, at the expense of Lord Ardilaun of the Guinness family.
In the 1920s Merrion Square Park was considered as a location for the construction of the War Memorial Gardens, in honour of Irishmen who had died fighting in the First World War. Its proximity to the Dáil was one factor that stood in the way of any such plan however, with one Senator asking at the time if ‘the very heart of Dublin, under the very walls of the seat of Government’ was a suitable location for such a memorial, in the still-volatile political environment of the day. The site was later considered as a location for the construction of a new Catholic Cathedral in Dublin. It was reported in the media in May 1938 that the site had been “taken over” by the Archbishop of Dublin, with the Irish Independent referring to it in a report as “the site of Dublin’s new Catholic Cathedral”. It had been purchased some years previously by the church, for the tidy sum of £100,000. The Cathedral project never materialised however, leading to decades of debate on the future of the park. In 1944 for example Jim Larkin Jnr, son of the 1913 leader, asked in the Dáil in the park could be “made available for the use and enjoyment of the public or as a children’s playground”, but no attempts were made by the government to bring about such a situation.
1938 report on the park.
In 1970, Sinn Féin and others launched protests against the status of the park, claiming that it was still open only to residents of the square who rented keys at the price of £10 per annum from Archbishop John Charles McQuaid. This fee was later disputed by the Catholic Church, who claimed the fee was just over £4 per annum. Archbishop McQuaid had strongly backed the original proposals to build a Cathedral on the site, but with that plan long scrapped and the park still in the ownership of the Catholic Church, the Archbishop’s decision to grant access only to those willing to pay for the pleasure of strolling through the park proved controversial. The first occupation of the park saw over 50 activists, including residents from the nearby Fenian Street and Merrion Square, breaching the gates of the park and proclaiming it a “People’s Park”. Boldly, Sinn Féin also distributed keys to the park from their offices at 30 Gardiner Place, leading to the locks of Merrion Square being changed on occasion, a costly annoyance for authorities as new keys had to be distributed.
Sinn Féin statement in the Sunday Independent, July 1970.
Sinn Féin were heavily involved in the Dublin Housing Action Committee, active in the same period, a militant campaign against the inadequate housing on offer to working class Dubliners at the time. This movement had been involved in many political occupations, as well as squatting actions. The action around Merrion Square can be seen as part of a broader campaign over the ownership of the city. In July 1970, the same month the actions at Merrion Square Park began, 500 people attended a protest at the G.P.O on O’Connell Street against proposed legislation which would aim to tackle “forcible entry and occupation”. There was a widespread belief that the actions of housing activists in the city motivated the government to consider such legislation.
Archbishop McQuaid, targeted by Sinn Féin protests in 1970 over Merrion Square Park.
One resident of the park complained in a newspaper after the protest that “When Sinn Féin entered Merrion Square…they immediately began to play football across the tennis courts, thereby destroying the surface which has taken months of preparation for the tennis season.”
Beyond Sinn Féin, the private nature of the park attracted protest from others, including young messenger boys employed by the nearby E.S.B, who claimed that a letter had been sent by MacQuaid to their employer informing them they were no longer permitted to play football in the park! The boys mounted a protest outside of the park. The Labour Party also succeeded in gathering thousands of signatures for a petition calling for the parks opening.
A year on from the protests, it was reported that An Taisce were in discussion with the Archbishop of Dublin regarding the parks future, and the possibility of opening it to the broader public. The Catholic Church went to great lengths to insist this was of their own deciding, and not influenced by any protest.
Merrion Square itself saw very significant political violence in 1972 when a crowd laid siege to the British Embassy following Bloody Sunday. In The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, a story is recounted by one OIRA member at the time who remembered attempting to blow the doors off the building, by placing explosives inside of coffins that students had carried to the embassy. After two further days of protest and disturbances outside the embassy, it was eventually burnt on 2 February 1972.
In April 1974 the park was handed over, and it was reported in the newspapers on the day after the opening of the park that “hundreds of children cheered when, for the first time in 200 years, the padlocks were removed from the gates of Merrion Square Park yesterday.” Today, the park is open to the public throughout the year, with several festivals hosted within it annually for the public to enjoy.
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Come Here To Me! 
Is it still called Archbishop Ryan park?
Renamed to the simpler ‘Merrion Square Park’.
Thanks Donal.
Great article, really enjoyed it. I think there’s a cut-off sentence though?
“The Catholic Church went to great lengths to insist” – what did they insist?
Thanks Dara, well spotted! Essentially that handing it over was their own decision, and not influenced by Sinn Féin pressure.
Frank Keoghan (People’s Movement) and Máirín De Burca then members of Official Sinn Fien were very much involved the action around Merrion Square.
Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the [Bishop’s] garden.
It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. ‘How happy we are here!’ they cried to each other.
One day the [Bishop] came back … When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.
‘What are you doing here?’ he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.
‘My own garden is my own garden,’ said the [Bishop]; ‘any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.’ So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED
He was a very selfish [Bishop].
The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside.
‘How happy we were there,’ they said to each other.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still Winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. ‘Spring has forgotten this garden,’ they cried, ‘so we will live here all the year round.’
With apologies to Oscar Wilde, former resident at 1, Merrion Square (1855-1876) for this minor rewrite of the opening passages of his The Selfish Giant.
Fitzwilliam Square next? It was still private the last time I looked anyway (though someone had left a gate unlocked :-))
I think people need to be aware that this Sinn Féin was the pre-split SF. It had a socialist outlook and campaigned on a number of social issues. Unfortunately it was also reformist and secretly got rid of the arms of the IRA; when the “nationalist’ areas in the 6 Counties found themselves under armed attack by the RUC, the B-Specials and armed Loyalist gangs, they found that the local IRA had virtually no weapons with which to defend themselves. That was the main reason for the split.
After that the Provisional SF was initially quite anti-socialist and concentrated on the war against the colonial state and the British military. The a socialist split took place and the IRSP and INLA were the result. The remaining Official SF became increasingly anti-national and for state and media censorship, getting smaller until it broke up into different groups, of which the Workers’ Party is the sole survivor.
Provisional Sinn Féin during the 30 years war never took on the church nor did they spread the struggle to the 26 Counties by taking up the many social, economic and cultural issues which people there had to suffer.
http://rebelbreeze.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/armed-struggle-or-not-they-are-asking-the-wrong-questions/
[…] those. It had organised and contributed to struggles around housing, including occupations of empty houses and buildings. It had also organised trespass protests around foreign and private ownership of land, rivers and beaches, along with some industrial resistance actions (including taking on the Archbishop of Dublin). https://comeheretome.com/2013/09/23/1970s-protests-to-open-merrion-square-park-to-the-public/ […]
I am the son of Dennis Dennehy,and was only a baby when we got evicted,my mother n older brother were left out on the streets as my father was taken to prison,it was all staged as a pre-emtive strike,with The Irish Times reporting every move,while my father was in jail,my mother was giving a patch of land wi a toilet,and were giving a caravan to go with it,we were being watched by the special branch all the time,but my father outwitted them all the time,it was only after the success of the D.H.A.C that we got all the estates around Dublin,of which after 3 years in a caravan on Queen s.t.,right beside Smithfield Market,if you need any more info or have any to give me,it would be well appreciated,my e-mail is Dennis369@outlook.com,i am still finding out more about a true working class hero,who died from asbestos he got working on the buildings in London,it took him away from me n my older brother,the mother n father had parted a few years earlier,and at 15 i was only getting to know him n his full background.R.I.P to all our brave hero,s who walked the walk,at the cost of there lives…